YOU WHO NEVER ARRIVED

You who never arrived 

in my arms, Beloved, who were lost 

from the start, I don't even know what songs 

would please you.  I have given up trying 

to recognize you in the surging wave of the next 

moment. All the immense 

images in me- the far-off, deeply-felt landscape, 

cities, towers, and bridges, and 

unsuspected turns in the path, 

and those powerful lands that were once 

pulsing with the life of the gods- 

all rise within me to mean 

you, who forever elude me. 

You, Beloved, who are all 

the gardens I have ever gazed at, 

longing. An open window 

in a country house-, and you almost 

stepped out, pensive, to meet me. 

Streets that I chanced upon,- 

you had just walked down them and vanished. 

And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors 

were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, 

gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows? 

perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us 

yesterday, seperate, in the evening...

-Rainier Maria Rilke